The small town, which I reached late in the evening, was very much a Han community of orthogonal roads, square white-tiled buildings, tinted windows, pink-lit massage parlors, karaoke bars, and a giant billboard from which Dashan, an enviably fluent Mandarin-speaking Canadian, entreated people to buy mobile phones.

We sat wrapped in towels as she filled me in a bit about Josh, about his split from his wife and their young son, but then a cloud of steam blasted into the white-tiled room for a minute and she had to wait.